Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations

Rural Hospitals Team Up To Stay Afloat

Facing less money and patients with more health needs, hospitals outside cities are joining forces. Elsewhere, Alaska's two biggest hospitals fight over ER beds and a Dallas hospital's move is scrutinized. In Missouri, a mental hospital expands services to protect gender identity, and advocates for a Florida woman with mental illness try to secure care for her.

Stateline:
To Survive, Rural Hospitals Join Forces
Ask Sam Lindsey about the importance of Northern Cochise Community Hospital and he’ll give you a wry grin. You might as well be asking the 77-year-old city councilman to choose between playing pickup basketball—as he still does most Fridays—and being planted six feet under the Arizona dust. Lindsey believes he’s above ground, and still playing point guard down at the Mormon church, because of Northern Cochise. Last Christmas, he suffered a severe stroke in his home. He survived, he said, because his wife, Zenita, got him to the hospital within minutes. If it hadn’t been there, she would have had to drive him 85 miles to Tucson Medical Center. (Ollove, 8/18)

Alaska Dispatch News:
Anchorage Hospitals Appeal State's ER Bed Cap
Anchorage's two largest hospitals are continuing their struggle over the limited share of emergency room beds that can be built in the next several years, with both Alaska Regional Hospital and Providence Alaska Medical Center filing appeals over the state's recent allocation decision. An oversupply of emergency room beds tends to push up health care costs, so most U.S. states, including Alaska, have laws limiting the capacity of emergency rooms, as well as other medical services and facilities. Until the year 2022, no more than 13 beds can be added anywhere in the Municipality of Anchorage, according to the state Department of Health and Human Services. (Falsey, 8/17)

The Dallas Morning News:
Parkland Memorial Hospital In Dallas Still Under Review
When Parkland Memorial Hospital moves across Harry Hines Boulevard, it will bring along about 600 patients, 11,000 employees and countless pieces of medical equipment. What hospital leaders don’t want to transport is the controversy that has dogged Dallas County’s public hospital for the past four years. That will be impossible. While Parkland satisfied many of the issues that threatened its federal funding, it remains under continued scrutiny by the federal government. The Dallas County public hospital is two years into a five-year corporate integrity agreement that has focused on billing problems and patient-safety concerns. (Jacobson, 8/18)

St. Louis Public Radio:
Fulton State Hospital's Non-Discrimination Policy Includes Gender Identification
Missouri's only state-run mental hospital has updated its non-discrimination practices to include gender identity. That's despite the fact that Missouri's legal definition of discrimination does not include or protect sexual orientation or sexual identity. Marty Martin-Forman is chief operating officer for Fulton State Hospital. She says their transgender patients provided the inspiration to make internal policy changes. (Griffin, 8/19)

The Miami Herald:
Locked In Hospital, Woman Caught In Baker Act Fight
For much of Cindy Mertz’s tormented childhood, temper tantrums were a reliable method for coping with starvation, filth and abuse. But the screaming and foot-stomping that sometimes worked for a child have wrought terrible consequences for 21-year-old Mertz, who remains intellectually disabled. Three weeks ago, Mertz landed inside a locked Pasco County mental hospital. Her legal guardian has repeatedly demanded that she be released back to a state-funded group home where staff has learned to manage her behavior. The hospital has repeatedly refused. When a family advocate accused the hospital of “kidnapping” Mertz, staff blocked the advocate’s email account. And when a behavior analyst who had worked with Mertz for three years complained that her stay at North Tampa Behavioral Health was making her condition worse, the facility blocked his email, too. (Miller, 8/18)

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